In the fall of 1999, I collected open pollinated fruit from 21 experimental crabapple seedling trees, none of which were patented or introduced, and all of which have been subsequently destroyed. I extracted seed from these fruits and sowed the seed into seedbeds in a nursery in Boring, Oreg. I grew the resulting seedlings during the summer of 2000, then dug and transplanted them into a bed on wider spacing in the spring of 2001. During the late spring and summer of 2001, I inoculated these seedlings with apple scab fungus and I marked all seedlings showing infection for destruction. From this transplant bed, I kept and transplanted 1015 seedling trees that showed a degree of resistance to apple scab. During the summer of 2003, I selected a compact, upright, green-leafed tree that demonstrated moderately strong resistance to apple scab and I named it ‘KW-78MX’ (unpatented). I transplanted the ‘KW-78MX’ into an evaluation block in March of 2004. I evaluated ‘KW-78MX’ over the next two years and decided that, while its upright form was important for future breeding and selection, it was not good enough for introduction because its white flowers were slightly small compared to existing commercial cultivars and its fruits were too large for landscape use. All of these trees were grown in the same Boring, Oreg. nursery.
In the fall of 2006, I collected open pollinated fruit from the ‘KW-78MX’ tree. From these, I extracted seed and sowed the seed in beds. I obtained 273 seedlings generated from the seed from the ‘KW-78MX’ tree. I transplanted these seedlings on wider spacing in a nursery bed in the spring of 2008, inoculated these seedlings with apple scab and evaluated them for disease resistance. From this bed, I kept 33 open pollinated seedling trees from the seed from the ‘KW-78MX’ tree that showed resistance to apple scab and healthy foliage and I destroyed the others. These 33 seedling trees were planted in April of 2009 on wider spacing in a nursery row for further evaluation. During the summer of 2011, I selected five trees from these 33 open pollinated seedlings with unusually columnar growth habits. In the spring of 2012, I transplanted these five trees to a long term evaluation block and destroyed the other 28.
Of these five trees, one, which I named ‘JFS KW213MX’, possessed an outstanding and unique combination of a strongly columnar habit, reddish purple foliage, reddish purple flowers, relatively small, persistent fruit, and strong resistance to apple scab and fireblight diseases. The ‘JFS KW213MX’ tree is the subject of this description. Of the other four trees, three have been rejected in the selection process for disease susceptibility and inferior foliage quality, but have been retained in the row for possible future breeding. One additional tree of these five columnar selections has been named ‘JFS KW214MX’ and is the subject of U.S. Plant patent application Ser. No. 15/932,166. All of the above trees were grown and selected in the same Boring, Oreg. nursery. ‘JFS KW214MX’ has white flowers unlike the reddish purple flowers of ‘JFS KW213MX’.
In the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013, I collected propagating wood from the original ‘JFS KW213MX’ tree and directed asexual propagation by budding onto Malus rootstock in small experimental plots in a Canby, Oreg. nursery. This propagation resulted in 8, 6, and 9 trees, respectively. I evaluated these propagated trees in subsequent years and determined that these asexually propagated trees show that the characteristics of my new tree are firmly fixed and identical to my original tree in every manner that has been observed. Of these propagated trees, all were destroyed after evaluation except for one that was budded in 2011 and planted in the same Boring, Oreg. evaluation block as the original tree; and nine that were budded in 2013 and were planted in a scion orchard in the Canby, Oreg. nursery as a source for future asexual propagation.